Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

With the leave of the House, I should like to respond as best I can to the points that hon. Members have raised. In response to the question from the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice), the use of the word ““failure”” is technically right. If a conservation body has not managed to notify the owner or occupier, technically it has failed to fulfil its duty under the law as it is written. We are therefore dealing with failure, and we might as well call it what it is. On the second question about who will determine ultimately whether reasonable steps have been taken, the hon. Gentleman is right. If representations to the conservation bodies are not successful, it will ultimately be for the courts to determine. As an independent body, English Nature—or, later, Natural England—will need to make its own judgments and decisions. A range of inquiries and searches are possible, however, in order to discover ownership or occupancy information. Clearly, it is reasonable that all those possible routes should be pursued. If representations made to those conservation bodies—which, one hopes, would identify whether something in the public domain had been missed—fail, the courts would decide the matter. The final question from the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) was whether existing triple SIs would be covered. The short answer is yes. Lords amendment agreed to. Lords amendment No. 16 agreed to.